Mint sauce

Overview

Mint sauce is a green condiment of finely chopped mint leaves in a sweetened vinegar liquid. Wikipedia describes it as a green sauce popular in the United Kingdom, made from finely chopped spearmint leaves soaked in vinegar with a small amount of sugar.

The recipe is short, and its results depend on three things: how the leaves are handled before chopping, how the liquid is balanced between sharpness and sweetness, and how long the chopped mint is left to stand in it.

History

Written recipes changed how the sauce was made. Florence Jack's 1914 Cookery for Every Household, as Wikipedia reports it, combined fresh mint with brown sugar and malt vinegar, poured boiling water over it and left it to stand for several hours. Elizabeth David's 1970 account broadly agreed with Jack but preferred white wine vinegar, which she called less harsh, and credited the standing time and the brown sugar for the sauce's quality. Jackie French's 1993 Book of Mint, also as cited by Wikipedia, agreed with David and advised letting the cooked sauce stand for at least a day, preferably a month.

Mint was also used with meat in the Roman world. Wikipedia reports that the Roman writer Apicius gave a mint sauce recipe meant for roast lamb or suckling kid, but the article gives no dates for it, and this page does not date it.

Preparation

The version below follows the method that Dominic Chapman published on Great British Chefs in 2017. The leaves are blanched briefly in boiling water and refreshed in ice water, and then they are drained, squeezed dry and chopped finely. The stalks are kept, because they flavour the syrup. Sugar, water, vinegar, the stalks and a pinch of salt are simmered until the liquid boils, then cooled. The stalks are removed, and the cooled liquid is poured over the chopped leaves in a jar.

Because the liquid is poured over the chopped mint while it is still cool, the sauce is a steeped condiment rather than a cooked one. Chapman's source gives no yield, so the quantities above are one batch and should not be scaled without testing.

Variants

Wikipedia notes that some mint sauces include fruit, such as raspberries, and that yoghurt-mint sauces are also made. Those are separate preparations, not versions of the vinegar sauce.

The older English methods differ mainly in the vinegar and the sugar. Jack used malt vinegar and brown sugar and added boiling water, while David preferred white wine vinegar. The Chapman method uses white wine vinegar, as David preferred, and adds a brief blanching step to the leaves.

Storage and use

Chapman keeps the sauce in a jar in the refrigerator. The sources give no shelf life for it and no tested preservation method. The only sourced statements about waiting concern how long the sauce is left to stand before it is eaten, which Jack, David and French each advised differently. None of them gives a safe storage limit, so refrigeration is the only storage advice this page gives.

Mint sauce is served as an accompaniment to roast lamb. Wikipedia notes its use in Britain and mentions that mint is also used in South Asian chutneys, which are a different preparation.

Notes

The Wikipedia article is a secondary source for the older English cookery books it cites. The page has not checked Jack, David or French against their own texts, and says so where it relies on the article.